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Wednesday, 25 April 2018

Hebrew Characters

As the Government teeters on the brink of collapse over the worst British political scandal in living memory, the BBC dutifully maintains that the main news is that Jeremy Corbyn failed to acquiesce to the jaw-droppingly arrogant and entitled demands of two entirely self-appointed bodies, one of them full of hardcore Tories and headed by a leading Conservative activist, and the other plainly and simply a front for what little remains of the Conservative Party organisation in London.

Even if the Board of Deputies and the "Jewish Leadership Council" spoke for every Jew in Britain, and that is most certainly not the case, then that would still be fewer people than voted to re-elect Corbyn as Labour Leader in 2016. The turnout at their lavishly publicised demonstration was pitiful. If that few protesters turned up to object to a road scheme in a country town, then the organisers would call the whole thing off and head to the pub. I am serious.

The local election results in London will be the definitive proof that Corbyn should simply have refused to meet this pair of joke organisations. Just as he should never have overlooked his supporters by appointing his enemies to frontbench and other positions, or allowed some of those to worm their way back in, despite their having resigned in an attempt to force him from office, or allowed a free vote on Syria when no one remembers a free vote on Iraq, or whipped an abstention on Trident, or acted against the social and ethnic cleansing of Labour Haringey but not to secure justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants in Labour Durham, or supported the Government's indulgence of the ludicrous theory of gender self-identification, or hinted at support for the Customs Union, or accepted any part of the Government's wholly baseless and now collapsed claims about Salisbury and Douma.

While Theresa May's Government is detaining and deporting British citizens based on the colour of their skin, her party consorts with some very colourful characters in the European Parliament, it restores its whip to an MP who publicly used the n-word, and it depends at Westminster on at least two MPs who subscribe to Dispensationalism, a nineteenth-century theory that, although hugely popular in the United States, is in fact of Irish Protestant origin. Among many other things, Dispensationalists want all Jews to move to Israel in order to bring on the Second Coming, prior to which they will either convert to Christianity or be killed. That is what those Evangelicals who subscribe to "Christian Zionism" believe.

Yet it is for holding the older Evangelical line, to which the idea of the modern State of Israel as a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy is as ridiculous as it sounds, that Dr Stephen Sizer is castigated by, you've guessed it, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which presumes the right to dictate who may or may not or may not minister in the Church of England, just as it presumes the right to determine who may or may not be a member of the Labour Party, or who may or may not appear on a platform with a member of the Labour Party. Stephen is a thoroughgoing Conservative Evangelical, and absolutely no one's idea of a theological liberal. Yet he is cast out for not wanting all Jews to convert or die, and Corbyn is assailed for associating with a man of that view.

In similar vein, at this very moment, Marc Wadsworth, who introduced Doreen and Neville Lawrence to Nelson Mandela, is in a hearing to determine whether or not he should be expelled from the Labour Party on the say-so of one Ruth Smeeth, who is notable for absolutely nothing apart from her allegedly having been the victim of Wadsworth's anti-Semitic abuse, which was conveniently witnessed only by herself.

If she, or the Board of Deputies, or the "Jewish Leadership Council" wanted to make themselves useful, then, as we moved towards an entirely unnecessary war with Iran at Israel's insistence, they would board a plane to Tehran, unannounced, and smartphones in hand so that one of them might tweet immediately before landing that they would not be leaving without Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
But they won't. They haven't yet, and they won't. Then again, nor has Jeremy Corbyn.

2 comments:

If it is full of hard core Tories then why, in your earlier posts, would such Jews not be allowed into Tory households. Surely, they must live in them... unless you suggest that they are caravans dwellers in gardens.